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A review by matthewcpeck
The Dog of the South by Charles Portis
4.0
The third novel by Charles Portis is a deadpan comic masterwork. It's about a Little Rock copy editor named Raymond Midge that embarks on a madcap journey into Central America in search of the coworker that ran off with his car and his wife. He picks up a "defrocked" doctor and swindler named Reo Symes and ends up tracking down his quarry - and facing down a hurricane - in British Honduras (now Belize). That's about as much plot as there is, which is a good thing.
"The Dog of the South" is a picaresque, a road book, and a source of slacker humor that's ahead of its time. As in "True Grit", much of its strength is derived from the carefully crafted first-person narration. Raymond Midge, with his enthusiasm for Civil War history and vague plans for continuing education, is a rather dull guy. No matter how stressful, life-threatening, or grotesque his surroundings, his emotional barometer rarely rises beyond a "would you believe that?"-type bemusement and his tone retains a proper Southern deliberateness.
"The Dog of the South" avoids datedness and contains at least one shockingly hilarious sentence on each page. It's an underrated, idiosyncratic American novel.
"The Dog of the South" is a picaresque, a road book, and a source of slacker humor that's ahead of its time. As in "True Grit", much of its strength is derived from the carefully crafted first-person narration. Raymond Midge, with his enthusiasm for Civil War history and vague plans for continuing education, is a rather dull guy. No matter how stressful, life-threatening, or grotesque his surroundings, his emotional barometer rarely rises beyond a "would you believe that?"-type bemusement and his tone retains a proper Southern deliberateness.
"The Dog of the South" avoids datedness and contains at least one shockingly hilarious sentence on each page. It's an underrated, idiosyncratic American novel.